After a while, Emily was the first of the three girls to regain her senses and stop braying. Not long after, Stephanie stopped too and eventually little Alison.
Emily hung her ears.
Emily was very ashamed. Not even she herself believed that she could give such a real, long and loud bray that any donkey would envy.
Now it seemed normal to her, Emily felt right to act that way.
But Emily did not have much time to think about that because she was surprised by the presence of a large gray jackass that was not more than 10 meters from her. And the wild jack was not alone, behind him was his herd.
The herd was led by that gray jack, he was the alpha male. Most of the herd consisted of females. It contained between 20 and 30 adult jennies, as well as foals, fillies, colts and young stallions under 18 months of age. There were also some young jacks. But they were submissive to the dominant male.
"Haw-hee! Haw-hee!" The alpha male brayed briefly at Emily, Stephanie and Alison as if he was introducing himself.
Emily did not understand how she knew, but she understood that the jack was inviting them to become part of his herd. And Emily, as the leader of the group of three former girls, had to decide.
Emily had the urge to answer him. She wanted to reject such an offensive proposal, they were human girls, not donkeys. But something inside Emily was telling her to agree to join them.
She had a feeling that if she brayed to the jackass, it meant that they agreed to be part of his herd.
A tear streamed down Emily's cheek as she felt a bray rumbling up on her throat. Emily wanted to stop acting like a donkey.
But she lifted her head towards the sky to let the air bubble explode out of her.
“Heeeeeeeeeee-HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW!”, Emily brayed at him.
Emily's loud, deep braying startled the whole herd, then everyone began to bray, including Stephanie and Alison.
Emily, Stephanie and Alison were already part of the clan.
When everyone calmed down, the alpha donkey started walking and his whole group started following him. Emily did the same although she stayed in the back of the herd. Stephanie and Alison didn't quite understand what had happened but they had to follow Emily.
"What happened Emily?" Alison asked. "Why are we following these wild donkeys?"
Emily hung her head. She didn't want to answer Alison for two reasons. The first reason was that Emily was afraid to find that she had completely lost her human voice after giving some good realistic brays. The second reason was that Emily was ashamed to tell Alison that she had agreed to join a herd of donkeys.
"Those brays you gave ... were different ..." Stephanie said approaching Emily.
"Yes they were." Alison said. "Even I hadn't heard such loud braying from a real donkey."
"Alison!"
"Sorry, it was not my intention ...."
But instead of being offended, Emily smirked.
"Well, doing that was kind of fun", Emily said surprising herself. "Hey, I can still talk!"
Emily calmed down a bit for not having lost her voice.
"Well, after I see you talking to that jack I thought the same too," Stephanie confessed. "By the way, what did you talk about?"
"That's the male donkey whose braying we had heard, right?", said Alison.
Emily steeled herself to tell them what had happened.
"WHAT?!? Now we are part of this group of animals?", asked Alison terrified.
"I don't know what happened to me," Emily said to Alison. "It was as if his braying hypnotized me. It must have been donkey instinct. And that instinct was what caused us to bray every time we heard that jack. We were calling him to find us. "
"If you can't control yourself anymore, then less me," Alison started crying. "There is no remedy. We can not resist anymore. We are going to be donkeys forever....Haw! Haw! Haw! Haw! Haw-heeeee!!!"
Alison's crying had turned to braying and she started bucking. She brayed uncontrollably.
"No, Alison. Panicking makes the donkey instincts stronger", Emily tried to reassure her but Alison continued to bray with sadness.
"I don't want to be a donkey!" Alison hung her head. Her whining caught the attention of some curious foals and fillies who began to approach Alison to see what was wrong with her.
The young donkeys came forward, drawn by Alison's brays. When Alison looked up, she saw them gathered around her.